


Wake Me Up When It's All Over

by dizzy



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: Assault, Homelessness, M/M, Minor Character Death, Sexual Assault, homeless!au, non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1589804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sad story about a sad boy who will find his happy ending one day. </p><p>Or: the story of how Chris became homeless and then met Darren.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake Me Up When It's All Over

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion fic to [a series of crisscolfer homeless au one-shots](http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com/tagged/homeless!au%0A) I wrote back in December. 
> 
> Please take notice of the warnings! Sexual assault, prostitution, drug use (not main character), character death (not main character). 
> 
> Thanks to [bbcott](http://bbcott.tumblr.com) for beta reading, and to Mav and Bee for being flawless bitches and also insanely encouraging.

When Chris is five, his sister is born. 

She's tiny and wrinkly and screams a lot and Chris spends the first six months of her life hating her. She can't play with toys and she sleeps all the time and "Be quiet, Christopher!" becomes the phrase he hears most often. 

Can't wake the baby. Be careful with the baby. That's not yours, that's for the baby. 

Chris is already a quiet child. He likes it best when his parents are reading him stories or taking him to the park where he can run around the big towering play castle with the swinging bridge that he’s brave enough to walk across now, and the big slide the goes down into the sand. He doesn’t even start fights with other kids and he doesn’t scream like they do. His grandmother calls him the most polite little boy she’s ever met, and smooths his hair down when she says it. 

He doesn’t know why his parents even wanted to have another baby, but he doesn’t like it very much. Before Hannah came along his mother and father had plenty of time for him. Now it's all about her. 

But then he gets a little older and so does she and it becomes sort of fun when she toddles after him. She still can't really play, but she waves the toys around in her hands and munches on them and grins toothlessly at him. 

She’s still not his favorite person in the world, but he the more he realizes that he is her favorite person the more his fondness for her grows. 

Hannah's two when Chris really begins to understand that something is wrong with her. He’s seven by then, in second grade and learning to read all on his own. He’s a big boy now. His parents tell him that when they want him to behave and his grandmother always says it when she’s proud of him or when he helps his sister. 

He doesn’t feel like a big boy sometimes, though. Especially not _those_ nights that happen far too often. When his dad wakes him up in the middle of the night an he can distantly hear his mother’s frantic voice on the phone. 

Then, comes the big whooping sirens of an ambulance coming down the street. He knows this all too well, one of the men in blue outfits explained to him one time what all of this means. Ambulances mean someone is sick and Chris doesn’t know who, but fat tears start to roll down his cheeks. His father bundles him up in a coat without even letting him change out of his pajamas. Chris still has his favorite stuffed frog clutched in his arms. 

Chris starts crying hard then because his mother is crying and then she’s gone, stepped back into the ambulance without even saying goodbye to Chris. His father hushes him and buckles him into the car. 

"Where's momma?" He asks, tears coming fast and furious. 

"She's riding with your sister." His father's voice is weird and far away, like he's not really there. It scares Chris more than anything else so Chris stops talking, stops asking questions. 

He doesn't say another word until his grandmother shows up. He runs straight to her and she picks him up and kisses his forehead. "Oh, sweet boy," she says, sighing. 

He starts to cry again. "Where's my mommy?"

"Did no one - oh, for pete's sake." She sighs. "Christopher, do you know why you're even here?" 

Chris shakes his head and wipes his cheek with a chubby fist. "Is Momma okay?"

"Your mother's fine, sweetie. Your sister got sick and your mother is back there with her so she won't get scared from the doctors." His grandmother studies him patiently. "Do you understand?" 

"Uh-huh," Chris says, calmer already. His mind works with the simplicity of a child's, not caring that he's valuing one person above the other. He wants his sister to be okay but his _mother_... his whole world would crash because she's the person at the center of it. His mother _has_ to be okay. "Hannah gonna be okay?"

His grandmother gathers him up close. "We hope so." 

*

Chris falls asleep eventually, but it's a fitful sleep and he's awake in an instant the minute he hears his mother's voice. 

He breaks out of his grandmother's arms and goes straight for her, throwing himself at her legs. "Mommy!" 

He's seven, he's supposed to be too old to call her that, but right now it doesn't seem to matter. He tugs on her jacket to get her attention and thrusts his arms up like he would when he was still a little kid, not even in school yet. 

She doesn't pick him up, but she does reach down to pat his head. "Christopher, not now." 

His chin starts to wobble and his eyes fill with tears, but he doesn't say anything. He goes back over to his grandmother and puts his head in her lap and pretends like he's falling back asleep. 

* 

After that, things change again. 

Hannah gets to go on a lot of trips with their parents. Chris always has to stay at home with his grandmother. 

He starts to not mind it so much. Sure, Hannah might get to see the beach and cool stuff like that, but his grandmother tells the best stories and she lets him eat pizza and she makes the best cake and cookies. 

It's his grandmother that signs him up for summer theater camp after he turns eight. It's his grandmother that goes to pick him up from school when he starts throwing up in class one day. He has to spend a whole week with her after that, because he can't be sick around Hannah. 

If Hannah gets sick like that, even just a cold, it could kill her. Chris becomes terrified of his sister - terrified of what he could do to her, of what his germs could do. 

He can't play too rough with Hannah. 

He can't go outside with Hannah if their mother isn't with them. 

Hannah can't play with the dogs, Hannah can't watch the wrong kinds of tv shows. Hannah can't play video games with him or use the computer. He can't have a birthday party at his house because all of the people around would disrupt Hannah. He can't watch Harry Potter with the volume loud because Hannah needs to rest as much as she can. 

Chris tries to understand, but he doesn't really. He knows what Hannah can't do, but he isn't entirely sure why she can't do those things. His grandmother tries to explain but only the basic concepts come through. He doesn't understand the big words and he can't even remember them well enough to try and look them up on the Internet later on. 

*

His parents begin to fight, too. 

He's never heard his father raise his voice before. His father is a big man, but he's quiet and he's gentle. Before Hannah got sick, he'd watch movies with Chris and listen so patiently while Chris made up stories about the characters in the movies. He'd take Chris out so he could ride his bike on the street and he'd obediently hold the other action figures while Chris rambled on and jammed them together in a parody of fighting. He used to bring home flowers for their mother and a new toy for Chris once or twice a month, just to surprise them. 

Now he says things like, "Not tonight, kiddo," and "Maybe later," to Chris when he wants to play and he doesn't bring flowers home anymore. Now he yells at Chris's mother about money and bills and doctors and Chris lays in bed and listens, terrified that one day he's going to hear the dreaded d-word - _divorce_. 

A lot of his friends at at school have divorced parents. 

He remembers Karlie Jacobs used to be in his class, until her parents split up. Her desk was next to his and they’d been reading buddies, working on learning their letters and sounding things out together. She came to school one day crying because it was her last day and then she had to go move with her mom to Toronto. 

“Why?” Chris had asked her. 

“Because Mom says Daddy is an idiot and ‘cause he’s screwing around with some blonde bitch,” Karlie lisps. 

“That’s a bad word,” Chris says. 

Karlie juts her chin out. “That’s what my mom said, and she didn’t tell me not to say it.” 

Chris knows what words he’s not supposed to say without his mother having to tell him. But he doesn’t bother reminding Karlie of that. She looks like she’s going to cry again, and Chris knows how bad he hates that feeling when he’s going to cry in front of people. It’s awful and embarrassing. 

So he distracts her by sharing his cookies at snack time and helping her with the words she can’t figure out. At recess, she holds court with a group of other kids and tells them all the same story, and all her friends huddle around her and give her hugs and say they’ll write her letters. 

Chris walks beside her toward the pick up spot when school lets out. He knows which car is Karlie’s mom’s. 

“Bye,” he says, just before she’s walked too far away. “I’m sorry you have to go.”

Karlie looks at him and shrugs but her eyes start to water again. “Divorce sucks.” 

Karlie isn’t at school any more after that. She disappears like she never existed and Chris doesn’t want that to be him. School isn’t his favorite place in the world, but it’s at least somewhere he knows. If he had to move to a difference place, the kids might be even more mean. 

And he can’t imagine not seeing his mom _and_ his dad every day. Chris might miss how it was before Hannah, but he doesn't want his parents to not be together anymore, either. 

He clutches his frog to his chest and cries. 

* 

One night he hears his sister laughing and gets out of his bed. He’s not supposed to go in her room unless he asks his mom first. She has to make sure that Hannah’s feeling well enough to play. 

“She doesn’t have as much energy as you,” his mother tells him. “But she doesn’t know it.” 

He sneaks very quietly into her room so he doesn’t get in trouble. 

Hannah is sitting up in bed with three of her stuffed animals all around her. Her face lights up when she sees him. She opens her mouth, most likely to shout his name, but he holds a finger up over his lips and makes a gentle shh sound. “Whisper, Han.” 

“Play wif’ me,” she says, waving her stuffed monkey at him. 

It’s the middle of the night, and this feels dangerous and sneaky and… fun. He crawls onto her bed and sits with his legs crossed in front of her. “What are you playing?” 

“Zoo,” she says, handing him the monkey and keeping the elephant and the giraffe for herself. “The monkey got out.” 

“Oh no,” Chris says, acting shocked. “Bad monkey! His mommy will be very mad at him, won’t she?” 

Hannah giggles. “Uh-huh. He gets a time out.” 

“Maybe she’ll make him pick up all the poo. Monkeys throw their poo,” he tells her. 

Her face scrunches up. “Yicky-yuck.” 

“Exactly,” Chris says. “But then he wouldn’t sneak out again, right?” 

Hannah shakes her head emphatically to agree, and then she holds up the giraffe and starts to chatter. He only catches every fourth or fifth word, some of it total gibberish, but he responds as if he agrees and she doesn’t seem to care. 

He stays, walking the toys across the bed and sometimes pretending to tickle her with them, making her laugh and shushing her, until her eyes grow sleepy and she starts to slump back against the pillows. 

Once she’s asleep he watches her for a few minutes, and then puts the monkey back down by her side and tiptoes back to his own room to get back into bed himself. 

*

A week before Hannah's fourth birthday, she goes into the hospital again. 

She doesn't come back home. 

Looking back, he doesn't remember much of that whole month. He remembers everyone crying and his grandmother holding his hand in a graveyard and pictures of Hannah everywhere. 

He remembers too many people in his house and being passed from hugging relative to relative and wishing he could just go away. Suddenly there are flowers everywhere and pictures of Hannah in every room, on every wall. 

He remembers one hazily recalled voice telling his mother, "That little girl couldn't have been more loved in any other life." 

He didn't know what it meant at the time but somehow it still stands out in his memory. The words circle around in his mind and after weeks and weeks and maybe months he decides that he does know what it means after all. 

Maybe he didn't love her enough after all. He stops remembering what she looked like, or what she sounded like. He stops remembering the way she'd crawl around after him. She becomes the pictures on the wall to him, wide-eyed and pink cheeked and entirely two dimensional. She's not a person, she's not a lost sibling, she's just the turning point in his young life. 

*

Nothing is the same after that. Chris still goes to school every day but when he comes home his mother never has snacks made. Sometimes she isn't even out of bed. 

Chris goes to his room and writes in his notebooks until his father comes home, but after a while the numbers on the clock start to get higher and higher with the wait. His father works later and once or twice he doesn't even come home at all. 

Sometimes Chris goes into his mother’s room and crawls into bed with her. She’ll hug him too tight and sometimes she’ll cry and make his hair all gross and wet but he lets her. He feels better when he hugs his frog so maybe she needs someone to hug, too. 

"I love you," he says. "Please don't cry." 

She just cries harder and whispers, "My baby died."

Chris remembers when she used to call him _my baby_ and he doesn't understand it entirely but that's the point at which he knows that nothing he does will make his mother feel okay again. 

He stops going into her bedroom after that. 

*

Chris picks up the phone and calls his grandmother. 

"Can I come over?" He asks her when she picks up the phone. 

"Of course, sweetheart," she answers. "You can come see me any time you want. Did you ask your mom and dad?" 

"No," he answers truthfully. 

"Well, why don't you go do that and the come back and call me again if your mom says yes." 

Chris is less fond of this plan, but he walks into his mother's room. She's on the bed asleep, hair a tangled reddish mess and mouth slightly open. He shakes her to wake her up. 

She starts and then looks at him with a weary furrowing of the brow. "What is it?" She asks, not unkind but also not eagerly. 

"Can I go stay with grandma tonight? She'll come get me," Chris says. 

He's only nine years old but he understands what relief is and he understands that relief is what he's seeing on his mother's face when he asks. "That would be perfect. She's a godsend," his mother mutters at the end. "You need any help getting your stuff ready?" 

Chris shakes his head. "I can do it by myself." 

* 

Back in his bedroom, he pulls his biggest suitcase out. It has Ninja Turtles on it and a bright green handle. He goes over to his dresser and starts pulling out all of his socks and underwear and then all of his t-shirts and his good winter jacket even though it's only August. He adds three pair of jeans and a church outfit, since his grandmother goes to church every Sunday. 

When that suitcase is full he pulls his backpack out. School doesn't start for another couple of weeks so there's still plenty of room to dump his two favorite books and a bunch of his toys in it. He has to fight with the zipper but eventually it's shut. 

He looks around his room and tries to decide what else to take. He sees pictures on the wall but he couldn't reach them even if he wanted to take them. 

But he doesn't really want to, anyway. 

He drags the suitcase and his backpack downstairs and he's sitting outside on the front porch when his grandmother drives up. He's been hugging his dog, because he'll miss his dog - but his grandmother doesn't like that much of a mess so she probably wouldn't let him take the dog anyway. 

"I'll come back and visit," he says, pressing his face to the hurry neck. He gets up and opens the door to the house to let the dog back inside and then drags his suitcase to the end of the driveway. 

"Now what is all this?" His grandmother asks, looking at the bulging backpack and the suitcase. 

"It's my stuff," he tells her. He isn't sure what she'll think about him moving in for forever so he nervously tries to avoid mentioning it yet. He figures she'll realize eventually. She likes having him around, anyway. She probably gets lonely in that house by herself. 

Chris will just tell her that if she tries to make him go home. 

His grandmother looks at the suitcase, the backpack, then back at him. "Well, then," she says in a gentle voice. "Let's get your stuff into the back seat so we can get home before Jeopardy." 

His face lights up. "I bet I will beat you again if there's cartoons!" 

She leans over and kisses the top of his head. "I just bet you will."

* 

He's with his grandmother for a week before she walks into his bedroom and sits on the bed. "Sweetie, do you think you're ready to go home and see your mom and dad? They miss you." 

Chris looks down at the blankets. "I don't think they do. I wanna just live here. They can come see me here if they want to." 

"Christopher, honey. Can you look at me?" She asks. Chris looks up. His grandmother looks like she's going to cry. "You know your parents love you very much, don't you? They're just sad about your little sister." 

Chris shrugs. "I guess so. I think I make Mom sadder, though." 

"You're a smart boy, Chris. I'm going to be honest with you, all right? Your mom has to figure out how to not be sad anymore on her own. But it's not your fault she's sad and it's not your responsibility to make her better. Your job is to be my sweet little man and grow up strong and make good grades in school." She pulls him into a hug and he locks his arms around her. "You can stay here just as long as you want."

"Mom and Dad said I could?" It's what Chris wants but at the same time, a little part of him thought that they would come and get him at some point. 

His grandmother cups his cheek. "Your dad is taking some time right now. He's staying with your other Gram until he feels better. They're just both very sad right now and they're trying to figure out what they need to do next." 

"Okay," Chris whispers. "I want to go to bed now." 

It's not even dark outside yet so he doesn't think his grandmother believes him but he doesn't care. 

He feels like he's going to cry but he doesn't want to cry in front of anyone. Only kids cry for their parents when they're upset and right now it doesn't matter how hard he cries, he's not going to get his way. 

* 

Living with his grandmother is actually pretty great. 

She's a better cook than his mom and she can't really help him with his homework but she doesn't yell at him when his grades aren't exactly awesome. She reads from her big fairytale book with him and makes up stories with him and encourages him to write them down. 

He starts to do it, just for her. He'll write and write and write in class (even when the teacher yells at him to pay attention) and run home every day excited to read to her what he'd done. 

She likes to listen to his stories, even if sometimes she falls asleep halfway through. She lets him do plays with the drama group and she shows up to every single one of them, clapping and cheering in the front row. 

* 

It's not like his parents forget him totally, though. His mother comes to see him once or twice a month. 

Chris is glad to see her. She's his mother, of course he's glad. But she's just... different. She doesn't laugh like she used to and she looks at him like he's something that's going to break right in front of her. She listens to him talk about school and encourages him in all the right places, but her eyes make him think that she's not really listening anyway. 

His dad comes more often, though. Every weekend, like clockwork. Chris starts to really look forward to weekends with his dad. They don't talk much about anything important but sometimes they go to a baseball game or go bowling. Sometimes he gets to go see his other grandma and his cousins, which should be fun, but it really isn't. His other grandma always yells at him about a stain on his shirt or his hair being too long, though, and his cousins on his dad's side are all bigger than him and they like to hit him and kick him and see who can be the one that makes him cry. 

He'll put up with it if he gets to see his dad, but he's happy that he goes home to his grandmother at the end of the day now. 

 

*

Chris is twelve when his grandmother starts to get sick. 

Her afternoon naps grow longer and longer, and she starts to get confused sometimes. 

He's grown a lot in three years living with her. He can cook himself dinner and does most of his homework like he's supposed to and he knows how to wash the clothes and the dishes. 

He likes being helpful. She's getting older and she's tired so much... 

Then the headaches start, and the way she gets kind of dizzy when she stands right up after being asleep. She starts to call him to help her walk to the kitchen or the bathroom. 

She's in the shower when she falls. She gets herself back out and dresses but she's limping and there's a pinched look of pain on her face. "Christopher?" She says. "Could you call your mother for me? And then… call me an ambulance." 

* 

It's a heart attack, and it doesn't kill her, but it knocks a lot of the wind out of her sails. She tries but the warnings the doctors gave her make it inevitable. She can’t really care for him anymore, she can barely care for herself. 

Chris moves back into his childhood home, and his grandmother goes back with him. 

He's surprised at how it's exactly the same as he's remembered it. Even the dog is still there, sniffing around Chris with curiosity before wagging his tail and flopping down happily at Chris's feet. 

His bedroom door is shut. He doesn't know if the blankets on the bed are the same as the ones he left, but he has a feeling they probably are. There's dust on every surface and a stale smell to the air that turns his stomach. 

On a whim he walks down the hall and pushes open the door to another bedroom. The walls are pale pink and the curtains on the window are drawn open to let the sunlight in. The window is even cracked. 

Every surface is pristine, and there's a coaster on the table by the rocking chair. Chris walks over and looks at the coffee cup. There's about a quarter left. He picks it up and it's not hot but it's not entirely cooled yet, either. 

It’s not too hard to imagine his mother sitting here but when he tries to picture what the rest of her day must be like, he draws a blank. 

* 

His mother looks at him like he's a stranger in her house, and he feels like one. She asks him about school but sometimes she leaves the room before he's even finished answering. Eventually Chris just stops telling her much of anything. 

His father meets another woman and he stops coming every Saturday. It goes from once or twice a month to once a month to random phone calls here and there. His father stops sounding so sad, and Chris knows that he should be glad but... it hurts to hear what his life is now. It hurts to hear that his father has a life without him. 

He sees his father for the last time on his thirteenth birthday. He gets a hundred bucks in an envelope and a hug and an introduction to the woman that his father is going to marry. She's not that pretty, she's not that young. She has kids of her own and she lives in Nebraska. They met at a business conference. 

She's a nice lady. She might even be a nice stepmother. Chris wouldn't mind finding out. He looks at his father, hopeful - but his father doesn't ask him if he wants to move to Nebraska. It's never even mentioned between them, though Chris waits and wants it to be. 

*

Chris spends more time with his grandmother. Every night he sits in her room, on her bed, and reads her what he's written today. She usually falls asleep halfway through. 

"Christopher," she says one night. He's doing homework at the desk in her room. 

"Yeah? You need something?" He asks, glancing at the water glass by her bed. 

She smiles faintly. "No, dear. But thank you. You're such a sweet boy." 

"When I want to be?" He finishes the line she always spoke when he was a kid. 

"Oh, no. You're a sweet boy all the time. Come here, will you?" She motions until he sits on the bed beside her and then she takes his hand. Her skin is soft and warm and wrinkled but her grip is strong. "I want you to know something, all right? I want you to know that no matter where life takes you, you are my sweet boy. I worry about you. You're too gentle for this world." 

Chris swallows against the rise of emotion. "Gramma?" He asks, voice cracking a little. "Can I tell you something?" 

"Anything." She pats his hair down. "You can tell me anything." 

He believes her... but at the same time, he doesn't. He can't bring himself to say out loud this thing that's been weighing on him so much. The way all the other boys in his class are liking girls now, and how Chris just... doesn't. 

He doesn't think anyone else in his life loves him as much as his grandmother does, but he still doesn't trust that she'd love him if she knew that. He's heard her talk about the homosexual on tv, and heard what the preacher said in church and how she'd nod in agreement. 

"Never mind," he says, looking away. "It's nothing."

She watches him. "Well," she says. "You know if you change your mind, I'm always here for you."

*

By the time he's fourteen years old, his grandmother sleeps more than she's awake. She forgets things and she's easily confused, sometimes leaving the stove top burners going once the food is removed or putting food in the oven but never turning it on.

One day she lets the dog out, but she lets him out front instead of in the back yard for some reason and she forgets to let him back in. Hours and hours go by and by the time Chris gets home from school, the dog is gone. 

He's an old dog by now. Chris tells himself that someone will pick him up, take him in. He's got tags and a collar, and Chris puts up posters all over town. It takes a while but eventually someone calls. His mother didn’t even know the dog had been gone so Chris goes and picks him up, holding on to him closely as the stranger drives him back home. 

Chris isn't dumb. He knows he's losing her, but he manages to always convince himself that it's never quite as bad as it is. 

He's the one that finds her in bed one morning, skin already gone cold and eyes shut peacefully. 

He sits with his back to the edge of her bed and cries, sobs messy and loud and uncontained, until his mother comes to see what's the matter. 

He looks up when he hears her approach. She stands there and looks at him with her face devoid of emotion and then she walks away. Chris goes for the phone eventually and calls 911. It doesn't seem like much of an emergency but he isn't sure what other number to call. There's no bringing her back, after all.

He doesn't go to school that day. Once the coroner arrives his mother seems to jump back into herself, smiling and polite and appropriately sad when she needs to be, but it feels like an empty shell to Chris. 

* 

The funeral is one of those things that Chris just doesn't remember after it's happened. 

He wakes up in the morning and dresses in the suit his mother picked out for him. The next thing he remembers is walking back into his house. All of her church friends have brought them food, so much food, and stayed to hug his mother and fuss over him, but now they're all gone. 

He's alone in the house with his mother and he's so angry at the world that she's the one he's left with. He puts up all the food away and goes to check on her.

He's angry, but she's all he has left and right now he's so scared of being alone and she just lost her mother. Surely she'd be upset. He checks her bedroom but she's not there. He goes to his grandmother's bedroom, but that's empty too. 

Then he hears the soft singing and he knows where she is. He stands there facing Hannah's bedroom door - painted white with the little princess crown decoration on it - and then goes back downstairs without disturbing her.

* 

His mother suddenly starts to notice him, around the time Chris starts realizing that no one is really there to stop him from doing anything he wants. 

A couple of nights he doesn't go home at all. He rides his bike around town and takes a notebook and a pen. He sleeps in the park on a warm, breezy night and no one disturbs him. It feels strange and like he's breaking some kind of rule. 

He stops going to school most of the time. The kids at school are cruel, physically and vocally, and now most of them are bigger than he is. They tease him about his voice and how he still does theater and sings and how poorly he does on his schoolwork. Their words cut him and he's done showing up for daily abuse. 

When he's missed most of a week, the school calls his house. His mother is home and she answers and she's waiting for him that night. 

"Don't you make me look like a bad parent," she says, flustered and offended. She's had years of being coddled as the woman whose little girl died and whose husband left her after it. "I expect you to go to class every day."

Chris is a tiny footnote in the story of her life as she tells it to others, and it leaves him feeling not particularly like he owes her very much. He just shrug and says, "I don't want to go there."

"You're twelve years old, you don't have any choice." She puts her hand down firmly on the table. "And you will not talk back to me, I'm your mother." 

He just laughs. "I'm fourteen. I'll be fifteen in a couple of months." 

Her mouth tightens. "I said don't talk back to me." 

"This is ridiculous." He pushes back from the table. "I'm going out." 

* 

The next morning he comes back and the house is empty. 

That's the first time he steals from her. He opens the draws in her bedroom and pulls out whatever he can find. There's not much there, and he realizes she must keep most of it in her purse. 

Over the next week he sneaks fives and tens and twenties. She doesn't notice, and he goes to school every day just to try and keep her from having a reason to pay attention. There's not even a reason at first. He's not actively thinking of leaving, he's just realizing... he might need a backup plan. 

* 

On his fifteenth birthday he waits for the phone to ring, waits for his father to call. The call never comes so eventually Chris decides that he's done waiting. 

He dials the number that's belonged to his dad for as long as he can remember. Two rings and he gets a disconnected message. 

He goes into the bathroom and throws up. His mother hears him and stands in the doorway. "Was it that leftover chicken in the fridge? Should I throw that out." 

Chris spits in the sink and then rinses his mouth with mouthwash. "Do you know Dad's new number?" 

His mother doesn't say anything until Chris looks at her. "No," she says, almost sympathetic. "That man hasn't spoken a word to me in three years." 

"I'm sorry," Chris says, feeling just as sorry for her as she does for him. 

She shakes her head. "We're better off. You and me. We don't need him." 

It might be the first time she's even spoken about Chris like they're a unit. He looks at her, her familiar face aged faster than it should, the way her hair was dyed red some months ago and is growing out a dull dishwater gray, the way the lipstick she was wearing has worn off the center of her mouth. 

He wants to trust her. He wants to love her. He wants to have the mother that he needs. 

"I'm gay," he says. 

Her mouth tightens and that look of motherly comfort is gone in an instant. "You will not speak that in my house, young man."

She walks away. 

* 

The house gets colder after that. They both live in it but there’s nothing to really connect them together anymore. When he does feel her presence, it’s in all those ways he’d just rather not - a Bible on his bed, notes with scriptures, church pamphlets. She leaves them around like it’ll be some kind of temptation to his curiosity, like he’ll soak in the religion through proximity. 

One night his mother makes dinner. “Dress up,” she tells him, a look on her face that tells Chris that this is no cause for celebration. 

He’s right to worry. At seven on the dot the door rings and a man stands there dressed in a suit, a book clasped in his hand. 

“Christopher,” his mother says, beckoning. He steps forward, wary. “This is Pastor Reginald. He’ll be joining us for dinner tonight, and to speak with you.” 

“No,” Chris says, shaking his head. “No.” 

“Christopher-” 

“No,” Chris spits at her, and goes upstairs. He hears his mother apologizing profusely and catches little snippets of the conversation. 

_Lost cause. Salvation. His sin._

He slams the door and locks it and doesn’t come out until the next morning. 

*

Chris stays home less and less. He finds sanctuary in the library, in the park, wherever he can. 

One day as he leaves he realizes that he could just… not come home. The idea makes his heart race and he doesn’t follow through on it that night but it sticks with him. He starts to look around the room and in his mind he’s coming up with a little list, the things he’d take with him when he left. 

Then he starts to put those things in a suitcase, one by one. There’s really not that much, in the end. A book of fairytales his grandmother gave him. Clothes - warm ones, t-shirts, socks, underwear, a couple pair of jeans. 

He starts to go through his mother’s purse when she’s not in the room. He takes fives and tens, a few times a week. Never enough that she’d notice - but she’s really not that observant anyway, not with all the pills she takes dulling her down to nothing but spite and resentment. 

He asks her for money, too. He makes up things he needs for school and it all goes into an envelope in the pocket of the suitcase. 

When it’s almost full he stares at it. He thinks about taking pictures but he’s not sure now that there was ever really a happy family to even remember. 

His life, right there. He could do it. Buy a ticket on a bus, go somewhere else. Lie about his age and find a job. He can’t drive but he’s almost sixteen and he’s not stupid, surely there are jobs he could do. 

But for a while it’s just a fantasy, just a thing he can cling to and tell himself that he has options. 

Then one night he’s tired of pretending. He’s tired of the fantasy. 

He waits until his mother is in church on a Wednesday night and goes through every drawer in her room. He feels sick at the entire drawer full of old family photos and baby toys, but the digging is worth it when his fingers close around a fat envelope of cash. 

That night he walks out the door and doesn’t come back. 

*

It takes Chris twenty minutes to decide that he wants to be as far away from Clovis as possible, and three days after that to get to New York City. 

The bus is smelly and crammed with people. He sleeps with his suitcase jammed between his legs so no one will touch any of his stuff, and his laptop bag tucked between his side and the wall. At bus stations along the way he eats as cheaply as he can to make his money last and charges his laptop. 

He finds himself checking the Clovis news stations to see if he'd been reported missing, but he doesn’t ever see his own face on the page. 

He cries once, stricken with the idea that his mother might be upset, that he’s left her alone. But he remembers the names she called him and he doesn’t remember at all the last time she hugged him and he knows that staying for another two years wasn’t an option. 

* 

New York smells almost worse than the bus had. Chris pulls his suitcase along behind himself and hopes he doesn’t look as terrified as he feels by how big and loud everything is. 

He steps out into the sunlight on legs aching from being on the bus for so long. It’s late April and the weather is perfect. Someone slams into him and he almost falls. He’s muttering an apology but the person has already pushed past him. 

Chris spends the whole first day just walking around. The suitcase is unwieldy and hard to manage on crowded sidewalks so he finds himself standing in a department store worried about whether or not he’ll look too weird taking a suitcase in.

A woman approaches him, smacking gum. “Can I help you find anything?” 

“I need a backpack,” he says. “One big enough to hold all of this stuff.” 

She looks at his suitcase and shrugs. “This way.” 

There’s no way any of them will hold everything his suitcase does, but he finds a sturdy backpack that he likes and a smaller bag that will at least be easier to carry. Between the two he thinks he’ll be able to keep most of the clothes he brought. 

“Is there somewhere I can sell suitcase?” He asks the woman as he checks out. It’s nice, from an expensive set his parents bought him years and years ago. 

The lady looks it over and shrugs again. “Pawn shop two blocks over.” 

“Thanks,” he says, and heads out with his arms full of his new purchases. 

*

He finds a little park and sits on the ground, aware that people are watching him but telling himself that he doesn’t care. He transfers his things over one by one, toothbrush and toothpaste and soap and deodorant, laptop and his grandmother’s book and the cheap notebook he’d bought at a bus station convenience store, clothes and the money that he carefully conceals from view. 

Between the money he’s been saving for months and the money he’d stolen from his mother before he left, he has just over four hundred dollars. 

The guy at the pawn shop eyes him suspiciously but it’s a seedy little shop and he asks Chris if he stole it (“No.”) and how old he is (“Twenty-one,” just to be safe) and then he offers Chris twenty bucks for the suitcase. Chris thinks briefly about arguing but he can’t prove his age and it’s better than nothing. 

He takes the twenty dollars and adds it to his envelope. 

* 

“Excuse me,” he says, stopping a woman who doesn’t look too unfriendly. “Can you tell me how to get to Central Park?” 

She kindly points out directions to him, and Chris only catches about half of it but it’s good enough. 

*

On his second day in New York, he walks into a bookstore and asks for an application. 

He’s a smart guy but staring at the paper in front of him he realizes how dumb he really is. The very first block of blank lines want information he can’t give. 

Phone number. Address. 

His heart starts to pound and he feels a little sick. 

Education. Experience. References. 

He walks out and leaves the application sitting on the table. 

*

After a week he realizes that he’s homeless. It’s not a transition, it’s not a temporary thing. 

He’s spent almost a fourth of his money in just a week. He stops trying to eat three times a day, he stops paying to go in museums and sit every day. 

He finds other things to do, other places to go. Cafes seem to accept him as someone who is supposed to be there as long as he has his laptop out and he looks young enough that people don’t ask him to leave very often even when all he gets to drink is water. 

He makes four hundred dollars last for a month and a half but on a Friday in late May he spends his last two dollars on a dollar menu hamburger to ease his grumbling stomach. 

After he eats it his stomach is full but the rest of him is empty, hollow through and through. That’s it - that’s the last of his safety, the last of his money. Now he’s homeless and penniless in one of the biggest and harshest cities in the world. 

*

The longer he’s on the streets the harder it is to get by. His clothes are dirty and he looks dirty, summer setting in with the worst kind of heat. He starts to get looks and stares when he tries to walk into places. 

The first time he’s asked to leave an establishment he cries for an hour outside. But it happens a second time, and a third time, and it doesn’t stop bothering him but he starts becoming desperate enough that he keeps trying anyway. 

Once in a while he sits outside and looks pitiful enough that people throw change at him and he’ll splurge on little treats - no longer candy bars and diet sodas, but a load of laundry or packet of baby wipes. 

Sleeping is the hardest part. He tries to sneak in naps in all sorts of strange places - subway stations, bathroom stalls. He manages five uninterrupted hours in a little book store supply room before the woman in charge found him. 

She feels sorry for him, and instead of kicking him out she feeds him a sandwich and makes him a glass of lemonade and gives him twenty dollars. 

He’s grateful, but it teaches him one thing; that sometimes if he asks, people will help him. Most of the time they’ll say no, or fling insults at him, or not even let him get close enough to speak. They cross streets with a sneer or a look of disdain. 

But sometimes if he hangs around outside of a restaurant or a fast food place sometimes people will bring him out something. Sometimes they’ll just give him five bucks. Once or twice they ask him if he needs a ride home or for someone to call his parents for him. 

That becomes his day - wandering, hoping, begging when he has to. But as miserable of a life as it is, Chris falls in love with New York City. He can sit in the park and watch children play and write. He can dip his toes in the water or stretch out on a rock. He can wander the free museums and galleries and soak himself in the culture of this place that only existed to him as some surreal vision in tv shows and books for most of his life. 

There are other homeless people everywhere. They’re unavoidable, though Chris does try… at first. 

Until he catches the eye of a boy that doesn’t look much older than Chris himself. “Hey,” the boy says. He has shaggy blonde hair and green eyes and even slightly grimy it’s obvious that he’s still kind of attractive. 

And Chris is just as grimy and wearing clothes that look just as worn but he’s still a boy being talked to by another boy he finds cute so he blushes and stammers over his name. 

“I’m Cal,” the boy says, holding his hand out. “You stay around here?” 

“Uh, um, um, I don’t - yeah, I mean, lately, the last few nights, I-I guess-” Chris shrugs nervously. He still tries to sneak his way inside places when he can. “I’m Chris.” 

“Chris… you’re kinda new to this, aren’t you?” Cal says, looking him over. “How long have you been on the streets?” 

“Two months,” Chris admits.

“Shit,” Cal says, eyebrows raised. “You really are fresh meat. You doing okay, no one’s been messing with you?” 

Chris shrugs. He’s been catcalled and shouted at a few times, but he stays in crowded places. “Not really?” 

Cal reaches out and pushes Chris’s hair off of his forehead where it’s flopped over. The sudden, uninvited touch makes Chris jump, but it’s actually kind of nice. “Aren’t you lucky. You hungry, baby?” 

He’s starving, actually. He nods. “Yeah, I haven’t eaten since yesterday.” 

“Well, come on then.” Cal glances at the bag slung over Chris’s arm. “That all you got?” 

Chris nods. His laptop is in his backpack, along with the twenty dollars he’d collected just by sitting on the sidewalk, precious dollars he’s trying to save up to maybe figure somewhere he could go to take a shower. 

Cal wraps his arm around Chris’ shoulder and says, “Come with me, let’s go get you some grub.” 

* 

Cal takes him to a restaurant, nothing fancy but somewhere with a host that seats them. Chris feels like every person he walks past is staring at him wondering how he got in the door. 

But Cal seems perfectly at home, even giving the waitress a friendly smile as he takes the menu from her. He looks over it and then says to Chris, “How does a burger sound?” 

“Amazing.” Chris’s mouth waters just thinking about it. 

“And fries. Or onion rings. Or both… we could get both,” Cal decides, shutting it decisively. 

When the waitress comes over he orders a beer and flashes her his ID. She looks at it, eyes narrowed. “Are you sure-” 

“I swear, I know, I just look young.” Cal sounds sheepish. “If I were a woman it’d totally be a blessing, but let me tell you, it’s kind of just a curse.” 

“Sure,” she says, laughing, then turns to look at Chris. “And what can I get you to drink?”

“Diet Coke,” he says, because it’s been so long since he’s had one. 

As soon as she comes back with the drinks Cal is ordering for both of them. “Two of your All-American Double Stacks with everything, an order of fries, some onion rings, and uh… we’ll try some of those fried shrimp as an appetizer, too, if you don’t mind. They look delicious on your menu.” 

Chris feels uncomfortable about having his bags beside him and how shabby and dirty his clothes are, but Cal seems as comfortable in his clothes and in his own skin as if he'd just walked out of the GAP. He acts like he belongs there and somehow... the waitress seems to accept it, too. 

The food gets there a few minutes later and it's amazing. It's easily the best meal Chris has had in a long time, since he showed up on the streets. He eats every crumb on his plate in less time than he thinks should probably be possible. Cal is a little slower with his meal but he finishes all of it, too. 

Chris wants to ask how Cal has money for it, but he doesn't want to be rude. He wants to ask why Cal is spending the money on him if he has that much, what makes him special enough to warrant it. 

Then Cal looks at him and says, "Okay, kid. Learning experience number one. Get up and go outside." 

"Uh - what?" Chris frowns. 

"Go outside. If anyone stops you and asks you anything, point to me. Tell 'em I'm paying for the ticket and you have to make a call or something." Cal shrugs. "Make some shit up." 

"Lie?" 

Cal rolls his eyes, smiling like Chris made a stupid joke. "Yeah, Bambi. Lie." 

Chris's heart is pounding as he grabs his bag and gets to his feet. His blood pounds in his ears and the feeling of everyone staring at him intensifies dramatically. He's two steps away from running by the time he heads up the stairs and out the door onto the sidewalks. 

Three minutes later, Cal strolls out the door like he doesn't have a care in the world. He spots Chris, glances behind him just once, and then grabs Chris's arm. "Now we jet." 

They take off running. 

* 

Over the few weeks that follow, Cal teaches Chris a lot. 

He teaches him the best (easiest) places to shoplift from. He teaches him which store owners and employees have the softest hearts and most generous pockets. He teaches him which shelters are worth it and which are more dangerous than living on the street. 

He teaches Chris how to take the most and give the least, and he introduces Chris to people that leave him slightly uneasy but mostly just relieved to have people to talk to. He doesn't trust them, but he trusts Cal as much as he will anyone. 

They don't spend everyday together. Sometimes Cal is just gone when Chris wakes up and he doesn't come back around for days. Chris never admits that he walks around just looking for Cal, but loneliness is harder now that he's had a touch of companionship again.

* 

Chris is relieved for a few different reasons when he sees Cal rounding the corner of one of their usual haunts. It's one of those weeks when he hasn't seen Cal but a few times, and Chris is beginning to go out of his mind with only his own voice for company. He’s always valued solitude but on the streets sometimes it feels more like being exiled from civilized humanity. 

He's also hungry, because he's just not as good at wheedling freebies out of people. He doesn't have Cal's way with sweet talking, that smoothness he can slip off and on like a mask. 

"Bambi!" Cal shouts. He's not alone, Chris realizes, looking over the guy trailing behind Cal. He's taller than Chris and a little beefier - as filled out as one can be when they average one meal a day, with greasy red hair and stubble. 

He has a closed off look to him, like he's pissed off at the world. 

"Hey, Rick. This is Bambi, he's my buddy." 

Rick mutters a gruff, "Hey." and looks Chris up and down in a way that makes Chris's blood run cold. Then Rick seems to dismiss him completely and looks over at Cal. "You bringing him along?" 

Cal shrugs. "Don't think it's really his scene, but I just wanted to - hold on." Cal drops to his knees and digs through his bag, then pulls out a paper sack and hands it over to Chris. "Can't let my little Bambi starve." 

He pulls Chris in and gives him a wet kiss on the forehead. Chris turns bright red. 

He has a crush on Cal. 

Cal’s not the kind of guy Chris would even have looked at twice back in Clovis, but here - the whole world is just different. Back in Clovis, Chris was too busy trying to avoid guys throwing him into lockers to really look much at them. 

On the streets, Cal is just… 

He’s someone. He’s someone familiar, someone who looks out for Chris. The sight of him makes Chris feel instantly more at ease about everything that’s going on. When he’s around Cal makes the nights a little less miserable, the days a little less lonely. 

* 

Sometimes Cal isn’t in such great shape when he gets to Chris. 

Sometimes he’s shaking and pale. 

Sometimes he can’t even walk without stopping to throw up. 

Cal has those problems that a lot of street kids have. Too many people looking for something to numb the pain - and they find it. They find it in the worst possible ways. 

Chris swears to himself that no matter how bad it gets, he’ll never be that kind of person. He’d rather end it himself then let drugs end it for him. Even if he hadn’t had such convictions before, watching Cal is a slap of reality to the face. 

Sometimes he’s bruised and bloody and Chris hates those nights, but he also kind of likes them in a fucked up way. Those are the nights that Cal doesn’t seem like this master of the city. Those are the nights that he can do something back for Cal, that he can be the caretaker. It gives him a purpose that he hadn’t known he was missing. 

That’s probably what hurts the most about all of this - not just needing people, but feeling like he’s not needed himself. It’s in the eyes of every stranger that glances his way, every vendor or shop owner or chef that shoos him away from their little plot of sideway. 

The nights that Cal hurts the worst are the nights that Chris can do the most, even if really all he does is let Cal lean on him and sing softly under his breath. 

Cal tells him once, half in and half out of sleep, that he has a beautiful voice. Chris smiles so hard his face hurts. He’s still wearing the next morning when we wakes up, even though Cal is gone again. 

* 

Chris makes it through summer until the days begin to blessedly turn into something more tolerable. 

He picks up a few other good tips. Shelters that will let him shower, places he can go to get handouts. It’s unreal how much good a new shirt and a hat can do for him. 

Cal disappears for a couple weeks at a time now, but he always manages to find Chris again. They greet with hugs and smiles and though he really has no idea if he ever crosses Cal’s mind for most of those days, it’s easy and harmless enough for Chris to just let himself daydream. 

He thinks it’s harmless, at least. He tells himself that it does him no wrong to catch a glimpse of a couple walking down the street and imagine that it’s them. To see two men kissing in Central Park and think, what if… 

* 

It’s raining on a Tuesday afternoon. The rain isn’t heavy, just a light mist. It’s one of the best days Chris has had in a while, a cap to one of the best weekends. Not that weekday and weekend hold much distinction for Chris anymore. He loses track for large swathes of time, realizing where the imaginary line in the week is drawn only by the slightly diminished schoolyard activity somedays and the slightly enhanced rush of morning and evening traffic on others. 

Chris has spent the day with Cal. He’s spent the last few days with Cal, and the nights, too. They’ve slept face to face with their bags tucked between their legs, whispering into the night with the city around them soundtracking conversations that feel like so much like intimacy that Chris is bowled over by them. 

They’ve slept well and they’ve eaten well, including that very day a successful dine-and-dash followed by what can only be classified as prowling the streets. With purpose, of course - Chris isn’t a fan of theft unless it’s absolutely necessary, but it feels shades of less wrong if all he’s really doing is making himself into a distraction with the shopkeep so Cal can stuff his pockets. 

Most of them get so enthusiastic with ushering out one street rat that they won’t even notice the second one until it’s much too late. 

Night draws close and Chris can feel Cal starting to get antsy. He can see it in the tightening of Cal’s jaw and the over-bright of his eyes when he’s about to say his goodbyes. 

“Can I come with you?” Chris blurts out. 

Cal just looks at him, surprised before his mouth softens into a amusement. “No way, kid. They’d eat you up and spit you out.” 

Chris really has no answer for that. “Oh.”

Cal slings an arm over Chris, pulling him in for a hug. Chris hooks his chin over Cal’s shoulder and tries to just enjoy it. “I like you, Bambi. I don’t want the hunters to get you.” The arms around him tighten and Chris fights the urge to beg and cling.

That night, Chris sleeps alone again. 

* 

Chris is not expecting the attack. It never even crosses his mind. He’s not naive; he sees the violence on the streets. It just feels like something that happens to other people. 

Not to him. 

Not like this. A meaty hand closing over his mouth, the scrape of sidewalk and loose gravel on his skin while he stumbles along to his feet to walk more than being dragged. 

He’s not passive. He tries to bite and gets wrenched to the side, gasping at the jerking to his neck. His whole skull thuds and pounds with the pain of it but he keeps kicking and digging in his fingers, nails bitten down blunt but still tearing into skin when he can. 

He can hear other voices behind him, around him. 

Someone keeps apologizing - but not to him. 

*

Something cracks when he hits the floor. 

“You were right,” a voice says, loud and too close, sour breath in his face. “He’s a pretty one. You got his bag, too?” 

From further away: “Yeah - shit, kid’s got stuff.”

His stomach drops. His bag. His laptop. His notebooks. His clothes. The few dollars he has stashed for emergencies. The one thing he’s clung to, the one shred of something all his own. 

“You lucked up.” Same voice as before, close but - not talking to him this time. Fingers squeeze at his cheeks, making his mouth pucker involuntarily. His eyes slit open and in the murky light filtering in he can see stubble and exaggerated, unattractive features. “Between this pretty mouth and that computer thing, we’ll call it even.” 

_This pretty mouth._

No, no, no, _no._

Then Chris really does think he’s going to be sick, because a new voice enters the conversation and he knows that voice saying, “You won’t hurt him, will you?” 

“Cal-” He shouts, struggling anew. 

“Don’t, Bambi, don’t-” Cal sounds slurred and out of it, but underneath that is something insistent. “It’s better if you just let ‘em. Don’t - jus’ don’t hurt him-.”

Chris can hear Cal asking, over and over as he’s manhandled to his knees. He can hear the name Cal is saying, though it doesn’t really even sound like a name - BD, Beady. “You bite and I’ll cut your fucking balls off.”

Chris wishes he didn’t know what was happening but he’s all too aware as that bruising grip tilts his face up and the sound of a zipper lowering fills his ears. 

* 

He throws up immediately after, throws up the water he’d had earlier and the come still pooled on his tongue. He throws it all right up on Beady, and that’s the last thing he remembers before his head slams into concrete ground. 

*

Things change after that. 

Chris changes. He gets up on shaky legs and walks out the door into the bright sunlight feeling like a ghost. His ribs hurt and he’s sure his face is a mess of bruises. 

People stare. Chris stares right back. It takes a week before he feels even remotely human. He loses weight he couldn’t afford to lose to begin with. 

He’s been homeless for a while, but his little saving graces are gone - the chubby cheeked look of youth that made people pity him disappears under the lack of food and lack of caring. 

He has nothing now, really and truly nothing. He has no possessions but the foul and filthy clothes on his back. He has no friends or companions to walk beside him when it feels too hard. He has no hope, he has no faith. 

He has no innocence left. All he does have are memories and regrets. 

*

Chris sits on the stairs of a church one evening and watches a woman sing. He likes churches like this one, small and tucked away. The people coming in and out of them are generally nicer and they don’t tell him he has to leave if it’s just him. They don’t do that unless there are other homeless people cluttering up the area so much that people start to complaining. 

A lot of the more dangerous types stay away from churches. Guilt complexes or just an awareness that they don’t fit - Chris doesn’t know why, but he likes it. Instead he gets people like this woman. She’s rail thin with skin deeply tanned and leathery. Her appearance is nothing overly intimidating and certainly not attractive - but her voice. 

Her voice is _amazing_. He watches people dropping money at her feet, but it’s more dollar bills than change. 

Chris watches her and he thinks back to those ancient days of school bells and classrooms and _you’re untrainable_ and maybe he is, but fuck that. He can still _sing_ , training or no training. The people at his grandmother’s church used to love his voice when he’d step up in front of the pulpit and sing high and sweet along with the hymns the choir chose. 

So he walks to a spot near the park and he sits down and looks and the ground and opens his mouth, letting the first song that comes to his mind escape his lips. 

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night…_

His voice cracks a little, a testament to his age and lack of practice, but he doesn’t think it’s actually that bad. 

Chris makes twelve dollars his first day, far from hitting it big but more money than he’s seen in a while. He buys a sandwich and a coffee at a deli (coffee, because it costs less than a soft drink and makes him feel a little more alive for a few minutes), a bar of soap and a bottle of mouthwash and a stick of deodorant and baby wipes from a little pharmacy. 

The next day he manages enough for a new t-shirt and a pair of cheap shoes. The progress is measured in centimeters but each little bit he gathers back to himself still feels like a hurdle overcome. He starts to rebuild. He gets another backpack, flimsier than he’d like but he’s proud of spending his busking money on it and it does the job okay. It holds his little collection of things. 

This time instead of mementos of a life he was barely holding onto, he fills his bag with things he’ll need to survive. Some bought, some stolen, some found - all priceless to him in a different way now - the soap, the deodorant, a cloth that he tries to keep from being too filthy; a blanket, something that will be treasure in winter but for now at least protects his head from the concrete while he sleeps; a box of energy bars, battered and carefully rationed out, saved for the times when he doesn’t think he can take another step without something in his stomach; a knife, a cheap pocket knife that he tries to pretend isn’t there. 

Every time his fingers brush against it while he digs around in the bag he feels a jolt of sickness and pictures _Beady_ and _Cal_. He doesn’t want to need it and he can’t imagine ever using it for that purpose, but he sleeps better knowing that he has it. 

*

Chris thinks, sometimes, about finding his way back to Clovis. 

He’s not sure that anything there would be better for him than this, even if he could find a ride. More likely he’d be raped and murdered on the way. Despite the fact that he feels gaping and empty with what he’s been taken from him already, there’s still the fear that the world will find some new way to fuck him over. 

He’s still afraid of pain. When he closes his eyes at night Beady is what he sees. 

He’s not really sure why he even bothers waking up every day. It takes every ounce of energy that he has to just get to his feet and keep walking. He sings sometimes, but any number of things can mean a day is a bust - too rainy, too hot, too many other people trying to peddle whatever they’re selling. 

Once in a while someone crosses his path that stops and really listens to his song. They look at him and he can see the questions in their eyes, but inevitably they move along. He treats back to whatever the most solitary slice of the city he can find is and hides until morning comes again. Day after day, night after night, it becomes routine. 

And then… 

Then he meets another boy. 

* 

Chris is scribbling in a notebook he stole from a five and dime weeks before when a shadow falls over him. “Here, kid. You look like you could use this.” 

“I’m not a kid.” Chris flies to his feet, prepared to try and defend himself and his spot if he needs to. 

Of course, Chris is - he’s not even seventeen yet. In the eyes of polite society he’s a child. It’s just that polite society doesn’t play much of a part in his life anymore. Police would charge him as an adult, other adults would handwave him as a lost cause, not worth the privileges granted a kid. 

Kids are to be cared for and taken care of. 

By that reckoning, Chris hasn’t been a kid for a long time. 

But this guy, apparently he didn’t get the memo or just isn’t all that convinced by it, because he hands Chris a stick of beef jerky like it’s nothing. 

“I’m eighteen,” Chris says, because that’s what he always says when people ask him. Cal taught him that. Never admit you’re underage, unless you think it’ll help. He doesn’t think it’ll help right now. He just wants this guy to go away, to leave him to this little corner of sidewalk Chris has plotted out for himself. “And I have a name. It’s Chris.”

“Well, Chris.” The guy just _grins_. Chris wants to hate him for that grin. He understands happy looks on people that live happy lives, but this guy doesn’t look any better off than Chris. What does he have to grin about? “Bon appetit.”

Chris feels his stomach lurch with a grumble, like he’s just realizing there’s food in his hand. It smells greasy and salty and meaty and his mouth waters with sense memory of the taste of beef jerky. He remembers his dad giving in to his demands and buying him similar things from gas stations, sticks packaged in plastic with rubbery cheese beside it. 

He’s instinctively distrusting of boys handing him things now, but Chris also hasn’t eaten in a day. He has to force himself to take slow bites and not cram it into his mouth all in one go. His mother always told him chewing and swallowing too fast tricked his stomach and he’d get a tummy ache. Now he wants to trick it - he wants to pretend it’s more filling than it really is. It works, too - at least for a while. The taste in his mouth is like nirvana and his stomach doesn’t feel quite so empty. 

Once it’s gone, Chris hates himself a little bit for giving in so easily. His body curls in closer on itself like he can shut the boy’s face and his stupid happy voice out completely. He hears rustling beside him and he realizes that the boy is making himself perfectly at home beside Chris, settling right in him like he’s got every right in the world to. 

Chris’s heart starts to pound with worry. He’d thought this spot would be clear. He thought maybe it would be a night of rest for him. 

But no. There’s this _boy_ now, and maybe this is his punishment for taking the food. 

He shoves his things back into his bag and gets to his feet. 

“Hey-” He hears the guy calling out, surprise in his voice, but Chris walks away as quickly as he can. 

No one ever gives something away without wanting something in return, and Chris is not going to stick around to see what this boy would take from him. 

*

Chris can’t sleep with anyone near him, which means most nights - he just doesn’t sleep. Nightmares, insomnia - it’s not like it makes a difference whatever it is. He just… doesn’t. 

He doesn’t want to walk in the night, either, though. The people out at night are terrifying. He’s chased once, saved only by the fact that the person after him is staggering drunk out of his mind, but Chris still runs so hard and fast and far that he only stops to be sick, drenched in cold sweat and lungs burning. 

He’s so weak. It’s a good thing, he thinks, that he rarely looks in a mirror. He’d hate the face he saw if he did. 

*

Chris tries not to let himself think of Cal. 

Of course, that means some nights Cal is all he can think of. 

He curls up and doesn’t cry but he still feels that solid weight on his chest as much as if he were, maybe worse because there’s no release for it. 

He understands what happened. 

Cal got into trouble, and Chris - Chris was his way out. 

All those days and nights Chris spent stupidly imagining a future with Cal in which they were both better than this, had a roof over their head and jobs and silly fantasies of love but at the end of the day, Chris wasn’t worth as much to Cal as a fix of whatever it was he was addicted to. 

Chris doesn’t even blame Cal. Cal never made him any promises. How can Chris be mad at Cal for not giving him something that Chris never even actually asked for? It’s not Cal’s fault that Chris assumed… that he assumed so much. 

In the end, Cal is another name to add to the list of people Chris thought he mattered to, only to find out that he was wrong. 

* 

The boy that gave him the beef jerky is named Darren. 

Chris starts to see Darren around a lot. It would be hard to miss him, considering Darren is about as loud and buoyant as a person can be when still considered the scum of society.

Darren sings, too. Darren sings and he gets decent money for it - more than Chris, but Chris is handicapped by the fact that he just can’t look people in the eye when he does it. He can’t be that guy bounding up to people and serenading them. 

Darren also has friends. He travels in a group sometimes and Chris is nothing less than terrified by the very concept of that. He can’t entirely avoid Darren, though. He sees him around the shelters sometimes, or the food banks when they’re offering up lunches. 

As September cools into October, he realizes that appearances aren’t just coincidence. Darren brings him food sometimes. Chris would love to take a stance of moral high ground and refuse it, but he’s almost always starving. 

Chris isn’t so easily won this time, though. A cute boy won his friendship with small favors before and he’s haunted by what it cost him. 

*

“So,” Darren says, dropping onto the ground beside Chris. 

Their backs are to a heavy stone bench, facing a patch of green park grass. 

Chris looks over at him warily. “What do you want?” 

“A hot dog and a foot rub, how about you?” Darren grins at him. His hair is unkempt but shorter than the last time their paths crossed. The haircut is bad - Chris thinks he could do better with his pocket knife. 

Not that he can really talk. His own hair is so long it flops over his forehead and he’s constantly having to push it out of his eyes. A pair of cheap scissors is on his list of things to acquire, one way or another. 

“Privacy,” Chris answers. 

It’s an honest answer. For someone who spends all day, every day alone - he’s never really alone. He’s lucky if he gets five seconds in a bathroom stall without the threat or worry of people having reported a miscreant amongst the civilized folk.

There’s nothing quite so humbling as being escorted out of a bathroom before he can even wash his hands. 

“Damn, you were supposed to say a hot dog, too.” Darren pouts, reaching into his backpack and presenting Chris with a lukewarm, sweaty can of Coke and a hot dog wrapped in foil. “And then I was gonna be all badass and be like got you fucking covered, man.” 

Chris hasn’t had a Coke in weeks. He still indulges when he has enough change and sees a drink machine, but those aren’t all that common except in buildings that usually don’t want him disgracing their entryways. This isn’t the kind he usually goes for, but it’s not like the calories are going to hurt him. 

“Why?” He asks, though he takes both. In the light of day he has less to fear… and the hot dog smells really good. 

Darren shrugs. “I like to do a good deed a day. Make up for all the other shit I get into.” 

“So I’m your good deed for today?” It’s a shoddy justification but somehow it still makes Chris feel better. 

“Looks like it.” Darren starts to eat his hot dog, and it’s gone in three bites. He talks around his last mouthful. “These things are probably made of fucking rat meat but they’re still the best thing on a day like today, don’t you think?” 

Chris is slower to eat his, chewing carefully. His mother used to tell him to if he ate too fast he’d make himself sick and he remembers thinking that it meant something, he understands now it doesn’t at all. To him at six, seven, eight years old - sick meant like Hannah. 

He was kind of a dumb kid when it came to some things. 

“So you’re always writing in those books,” Darren asks. 

Chris shrugs in response. 

“Like, stories?” Darren asks. “Writers are badass. All that imagination. I write songs sometimes. No one wants to fucking hear ‘em, but I write them anyway.” 

It’s harder to make the soft drink last. Chris wants to just gulp down the sugary sweetness. He imagines it crackling through his veins, giving him a woozy boost of energy. In reality, it’ll probably just make him tired and upset his stomach, but it’s worth it for temporary bliss. 

(This is why he can never try the harder stuff. One can of soda and he’s jonesing for more; he’d be useless with something actually addictive.)

Darren doesn’t go away, but when it becomes obvious that Chris isn’t really going to answer him, at least he stops talking to Chris. 

Eventually he begins to hum under his breath and it’s only minutes before the humming turns into a song. Chris’s fingers grow lax on the pen he’s holding and his eyes slip shut, listening to the music. 

He misses his iPod, long gone in the bag that - well. In the bag he no longer has. 

Darren has a beautiful voice, not technically perfect, but soulful in the sense that it feels like every word sung is sung with genuine emotion. It’s wonderful and it’s awful at the same time and Chris is unexpectedly choked up. 

He doesn’t look at Darren once as he jams his notebook into his bag and gets up, fleeing as fast as he can. 

* 

Darren doesn’t chase after him, but it isn’t long before their paths cross again. 

This time it isn’t Darren seeking him out in any way. This time it’s just the music that calls to Chris - a faint familiar song plucked from guitar strings, something he hasn’t heard in years. It brings back distant memories of his father with the radio blaring while he would work outside.

Sometimes he’d let Chris splash around in soapy water under the guise of helping him wash the car. He’d hand Chris a sponge and patiently wait, following behind to really clean what Chris would haphazardly swipe at with the soap. 

As soon as he’s close enough to hear the voice singing along he realizes who it is. He almost turns to leave, but Darren’s facing away from him and there’s no danger of Chris being spotted. 

It’s a warm day, no longer stifling heat, but not yet so cold that anyone suffers for it. Chris makes himself comfortable on the grass and he wants to write but the sun is pleasant on his face and he only fills half a page before his eyes grow heavy. The song is different now, but the same artist, and the same deceptive familiarity putting him at ease in a way he hasn’t felt in a while. 

He shuffles over onto his side. The notebook gets tucked half under his pack as he lists to the side, settling with his head on the grass and the sun on his face. 

For the first time in what feels like forever, he slips into a peaceful sleep. 

He has no idea how long he’s asleep. He wakes up sluggishly, startled when he realizes how deeply he’d been out. The sun is about to set and he sits up, wrapping his arms around himself. 

It takes him a few more seconds that Darren is sitting beside him. He’s writing on something that looks like an empty brown paper bag. 

Darren glances over at Chris and says, “Oh hey, you’re awake.” 

“What-” Chris clears his throat. “What are you doing here?” 

“Making sure no one fucked with you while you slept.” Darren says it with a casual smile. “You hungry? I made like thirty bucks. I owe a guy some, but the rest - I’m feeling tacos. You like tacos?” 

“What do you owe it to him for?” Chris asks, before he can remind himself it’s none of his business.

This guy doesn’t matter to him. Darren doesn’t matter. But if it’s drugs - 

He just thinks, Cal, and - 

Darren completely misses Chris’s moment of panic. He’s too busy pulling the guitar over and putting it on his lap, petting it proudly. “Payment plan for this baby.” 

The guitar has seen better days, for sure. The front panel is cracked and taped in a couple of places and it’s a chunk of wood from the long neck of it is missing but the strings look shiny and new and Darren’s petting it as if it’s something he just walked out of the store with. 

“Oh.” Chris pulls his knees up to his chest, willing his heart to calm. “Okay.” 

“Okay, what?” Darren asks. “Okay, tacos?” 

Chris nods. “Okay. Tacos.” 

*

Darren seems to know where all the best places are, and between his smile and apparently familiar face he gets them food for half the cost on the board and bottles of water, too. Chris is so used to the water from the free fountains in the park that it almost tastes unfamiliar. 

“Thanks,” Chris says, after he’s polished off the first two. He saves the third, carefully wrapping it in layers of foil and putting it in his bag. 

Darren watches him but he doesn’t say anything about it. “Where you headed tonight?” 

Chris shrugs. He has an idea but he’s not sure he wants to tell Darren. He doesn’t want to share his spots. 

“Okay. Cool.” Darren smiles at him, bumping their shoulders together before he stands up and tosses his trash into a nearby can. “See you around, Chris.” 

*

New York turns too cold too fast. 

Chris gets a coat from a secondhand store. One of the pockets is completely missing and it smells faintly of urine, at least until the equally foul scent of the city streets replaces it. There are other breaks, but handouts don’t feel quite so free when so much work has to go into them. He has to sit in line for five hours outside for a meager bunch of supplies, has to fight people that try to push in front of him and threaten him. He even has to pull the knife out once, though luckily the scrappy guy attempting to bully him isn’t looking for that much of a fight. 

The socks and underwear make it entirely worth it. He needs more, and he knows it. He’s too thin, he’ll get sick too easily. He needs layers. By mid-October, the days are still fine but the nights dip below fifty and he begins to feel it. 

The alleys he prefers become more full of people also trying to avoid the wind. He has to get up and move more often, challenged by people he knows better than to fuck with. 

One night he just doesn’t stop walking. It’s almost four, and he’s at the park. The slab of rock under him is warmed from his body and it’s tempting to just sleep there but without enough people around to ward off potential threats he can’t make himself comfortable enough to. 

He stares at the reflection of the moonlight on the water and, not for the first time, thinks about what would happen if he just… walked into it. Walked into it and didn’t come back out, if when the first of the stroller-pushing mommies or power walkers came by they just saw his floating body. 

It’s almost comforting to imagine the attention that he’d get. People would care, if just for a few minutes. 

* 

Darren is around more and more. 

Chris never lets himself feel that giddy excitement he’d felt for Cal, but he can’t deny that he comes to feel a certain kind of bone-deep relief when he sees Darren’s familiar face approaching. 

Darren starts to know the places Chris is prone to revisiting most often, and sometimes when Chris gets to a spot Darren will just be there waiting. 

On this particular day it’s a corner of sidewalk just beside the rails of a subway entrance. It’s busy enough that someone would notice if Chris got attacked but not so close to any storefront that he gets run off. It’s too noisy for people that want to sleep, but Chris never sleeps that deeply anyway. 

Darren finds him there and hops right over to him, beaming. “I have a surprise!” 

He thrusts his hand down at Chris. 

Chris doesn’t take it. Darren just lets it drop to his side without commenting. “Fuck off.” 

“Grouchypants. So you don’t like surprises, okay. Noted. But look - there’s this building that just got abandoned. Like, used to be an apartment deal, but they’re totally rebuilding it. They’re not gonna start the construction for another couple weeks though, you know? So it’s empty as fuck right now.” Darren looks as excited as a five year old on Christmas. “Some of my other friends are gonna be there but we can totally grab an apartment to ourselves if we can pick the lock.” 

“Can we really-” 

“Yeah, I mean, probably not for long and not if anyone is a dumbass and starts shit but so far all the people I’ve told about it are cool, trust me.” 

“Why me?” Chris asks. 

Darren frowns at him. “Why _not_ you?” 

Chris’s heart pound. What does Darren want with him? Darren wants to get him alone, has _friends_ there - Cal had friends - “I’m not going anywhere alone with you. I’m not-” 

Darren’s eyes go wide, sending Chris’s panic rising. “I’m not making you. No one’s making you, it’s okay - whoa, you’re not okay.” 

Chris is lightheaded and his stomach is rolling. Despite the chill in the air he feels sweat gathering under his arms and against the small of his back. Darren doesn’t come near him, and he’s desperately glad for that. 

“Do you need me to go?” Darren asks. “Because you don’t look so hot, and I don’t want to leave you alone here. But I’ll stay over here, okay? I’ll stay here and you - can you breathe? Seriously, do I need to go find someone?” 

Chris nods in choppy jerks of his head. The distant non-panicky part of his mind laughs at the idea that anyone Darren went to find would even care. 

It takes a while for Chris to get his breathing back under control. Darren sits and pulls his guitar over his lap, strumming but not singing. A few people passing by drop dollar bills by him and Darren gives them smiles of gratitude but it’s obvious from the way his eyes never leave Chris that he isn’t playing for money right now. 

He’s playing for Chris and it helps, somehow. 

Eventually Chris can look back up at him. “Sorry,” he mumbles. 

“No problem, man. It’s okay. I just want to make sure you’re okay.” Darren puts the guitar aside and leans forward. There are still a couple feet of space between them. “I come on strong some time, sorry.” 

Chris just shakes his head helplessly. He doesn’t know how to explain that he’s terrified over the idea of trusting Darren but at the same time he likes it better when Darren’s around. “It’s fine.” 

“So,” Darren lets one bent knee relax until his foot his nudging Chris’s. “Wanna come have a sleepover with me there, or you want me to just hang out here?” 

As much as the idea of a room with four solid walls sounds like heaven, it also feels like a trap and Chris can’t work his way around the apparent instinctive fear he has now of being closed in somewhere. “Here,” he whispers. 

“Can I come closer?” Darren asks. “People keep accidentally kicking me.” 

Chris laughs. It comes out sounding a little wet and choked, but it’s the first time he can remember genuinely laughing in days. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

* 

Chris begins to seek Darren out, too - though he tries not to let Darren know. 

It’s not that hard to do. Darren favors the same few spots. He likes to be right out in view, surrounded by people. 

Chris loves to watch Darren with people, too. He’ll pull out his notebook and write some, but mostly just watch - enjoy the show. Darren likes to get people involved in what he’s doing. He plays the passersby like they’re an audience at a venue. Chris sees him twirl young girls around, serenade middle age housewives, wink lavasciously at businessmen whose eyes linger - he leaves no demographic unappreciated. 

One afternoon a play group passes by and Darren starts to belt out Be Our Guest from Beauty and the Beast. He has them all laughing and dancing around him when their nannies notice. He pulls off the vagrant look better than most. His dirty t-shirt and ripped jeans could be slouchy hipster chic, his wild hair and stubble could be carefully fashioned and not forced by circumstance - but the women caring for the babies still see a young man holding court with young children and rush the children away. 

No one else sees how crushed Darren looks at the narrowed eyes and angry whispers from the nannies, but Chris sees it. Darren shrugs it off pretty quickly, though - on to the next face he can try to put a smile on. 

On a different afternoon, Chris watches Darren stop singing altogether to help an elderly woman who has fallen to her feet, her groceries scattering. Darren helps her pile them all back into the cloth bag she’d had in her hand and makes sure she’s alright. 

Darren isn’t a saint, but he’s _good_. Chris thinks Darren is probably one of the best people he’s found in this city and he can’t help but be angry that Darren didn’t find him first. 

*

Darren is around a lot more after that, once Chris starts to actually let him be. He stops leaving every time Darren shows up, stops questioning everything Darren tries to do for him, starts to talk and share more. 

Maybe he’s young and dumb and maybe this will end just as badly as it had last time, but Darren isn’t Cal. He’s never seen Darren show up glassy-eyed or spied the track marks on his arms. Darren has money and Chris doesn't know where it comes from, but the guys Darren hangs around with aren’t as seedy as the people that would come around with Cal. 

They’re not always polite, though. 

The first time Chris sees them and doesn’t immediately go find somewhere else to be, he gets a taste of something he’d never expected - someone defending him. 

A tall, skinny guy, whose name Chris isn’t sure he ever knows to begin with, gives Chris a once over and then looks at Darren. “He’d make a killing with that pretty mouth.” 

_That pretty mouth._

Chris stiffens, grabbing his bag from the floor and starting to walk away. Darren grabs his arm and Chris jerks back. “Hey, wait,” Darren says, quiet concern in his eyes. He looks back at the other guy and says. “You say one more fucking word about his fucking mouth and I’ll make sure no one gets to use yours for a week.” 

It’s shocking to see Darren go from all smiles, all happy overflowing energy, to - fierce. Protective. 

The guy looks between them and then holds up his hand. “I was just saying-” 

“I know what you were saying,” Darren says. “And I’m telling you: don’t. Come on, Chris.” 

Darren doesn’t let go of his arm until they’re clear of the area. Chris is shaking slightly and he hates himself for startling so easily. “Sorry,” he mumbles. 

“Don’t apologize.” Darren’s hand slips away and for a split second Chris is disappointed. Then Darren’s arm is around his shoulder, pulling him in for a side hug. He’s not certain, but he’s pretty sure that’s a kiss he feels Darren pressing against the side of his head. “He was being a jerk. You don’t need to deal with that.” 

“Thanks,” Chris whispers and then puts his arm around Darren’s waist. 

* 

Chris starts to sleep more, with Darren always around, but that doesn’t mean he sleeps better. 

In the depths of his dreams he feels thick fingers prying into all the hidden parts of him. The dreams get more graphic than reality had and hurt just as much because they revisit him night after night. 

He screams, sometimes. His own voice usually wakes him up but now that Darren’s there, Darren gets to him first. He doesn’t know where he is or who is with him, but he knows the feeling of Darren’s body beside him now and those hands are gentle. After the first time he got a bruised jaw when Chris lashed out hard against the touch, he’s figured it out. He talks while he shakes Chris away, keeps his head back. 

He knows how to handle Chris. 

It’s the only time Chris openly reaches for him. It’s the only time he doesn’t let his reluctance for contact make him tense and pull away. He does the opposite - he reaches out and grabs and doesn’t want to let go. 

*

Dumpster diving. 

It’s one of the least glamorous parts of living on the streets, right up there with having to piss on the sidewalk or beg for… anything. 

Chris can rarely bring himself to do it for actual food, unless he finds something still sealed in a package - but he has discovered that there are other treasures to be found. 

In the trash bins behind a Duane Reade, while on the hunt for toiletries or expired medicine he can stockpile for later on, he finds a box of discarded paperbacks with their covers torn off. He sits huddled in the bin pawing through them. He wants to take as many as he can, but he knows they’ll be heavy to carry around. He settles for a couple of mysteries that look halfway decent and he’s about to leave when his fingers unearth one he’d missed before. 

His heart starts to pound, a ridiculous reaction to a book, but it isn’t just any book - it’s Harry Potter. The fifth one, a fat volume that he should probably leave behind but instantly knows that there’s no way he can. He places it alongside the others in his backpack and climbs out of the bin, grunting as his feet land on the ground. 

He knows Darren’s a few blocks over doing… whatever it is Darren does to keep them both more well fed than Chris ever was when he was completely on his own. Chris doesn’t let himself pause to think about what that is. He’s sure the happiest and most innocent options involve stealing, and the rest - well, he’s just… he’s not ready to go there. 

He settles in with his book, stomach flipping in excitement as he starts to read it. He’s four chapters in when footsteps approach and he looks up to see Darren. 

“What’s your haul?” Darren asks, plopping down onto the grass beside Chris. “I got us a fucking feast.” 

“Oh… here.” Chris starts to mark his page so he can pull out the rest of the stuff he’s collected, but Darren grabs the book out of his hand first. “It’s Harry Potter.” 

“Whoa,” Darren says, almost reverent. “Blast from the past.” 

“It was my favorite,” Chris says. His fingers already twitch to take the book back, but he doesn’t have to wait long before Darren is handing it over. He puts it aside, on top of his bag so it won’t get any dirt on it. 

“Luigi was closing up early today so we racked up.” Darren pulls two boxes out of his own pack, handing one to Chris. “I think he put like seven kinds of meat on these. Oh, and we got some potato salad to split.” 

Chris used to hate potato salad. This tastes nothing like he remembers it - his mother’s was heavy on vinegar, tart in his mouth. This is almost sweet. He doesn’t mind it nearly as much. 

They both save half their sandwiches, not even needing to discuss it. Morning meals are hardest. Nothing has gone stale or bad yet and business is always well enough that no one is bored enough to have time to pity them. 

Stomachs full, they find a spot under a little walkway bridge that Chris is fond of. Darren has a blanket they put on the ground underneath them and they sleep in shifts when they do sleep now. 

Chris isn’t tired, so he picks the book back up. There’s a lamp just beside the bridge and he can easily make out the words enough to keep reading. 

“Hey,” Darren whispers, a strange wistfulness in his voice. “Can you, um…” 

“What?” Chris is curious as to what’s making Darren so unexpectedly shy. Darren doesn’t really ask for much from Chris, but when he does he isn’t bashful about it. 

“Can you read it out loud?” Darren finally asks. 

“Oh. I - yeah. Sure.” Chris smiles, still a little confused but willing. 

Darren leans back against the sloped concrete behind them, a little smile on his face as he listens to Chris read. After a chapter or two, he shifts over and to Chris’s surprise puts his head in Chris’s lap. 

It gives Chris a little pause, but he looks down at the soft curls gleaming in the yellow light and the way Darren’s eyes are closed. He looks sweet, and sad, and beautiful. 

Chris takes a deep breath and keeps reading. 

*

Chris figures it out, eventually. 

He knows where Darren is going when he says he’ll be back later and comes back with money. 

He doesn’t like the way it feels thinking of Darren being touched and used like that. He always watches more closely when Darren comes back. Darren doesn’t ever seem hurt, though. He doesn’t even seem upset over it. He only does it when they’re really out of money, but he always returns with a smile and a wad of cash.

“Do you like it?” Chris asks, the first and only time they acknowledge it between them. 

Darren doesn’t look surprised that Chris has figured it out. He shrugs. “It’s not bad. I don’t need to do it to get a fix or anything, so I don’t rely on it like most of the guys. I can be picky. And I’m clean, don’t worry. The only thing people get is my mouth or my hands and I make everyone cover up. It’s a lot of money for a little bit of work.” 

He can’t decide if that’s better or worse than Darren being used and hating himself. 

He starts to wonder other things, too. Like how Darren touches those men, if Darren kisses them, how Darren’s hands would feel on him… and then he has to bury down the sick shame that goes along with those thoughts. 

*

“Come on, we could do that!” Darren’s voice is bursting with excitement as he elbows Chris, probably harder than he means to. 

“No,” Chris says. “No way.” 

They’re watching two guys dancing - tap, Chris thinks, or some kind of weird jazz tap hip-hop blend. The guys are good. 

Chris is not that good and he’s never seen Darren dance but he’s pretty sure Darren isn’t either. In fact, he’s pretty sure they’d both just humiliate themselves. 

He may be a homeless teenager, but what Darren is suggesting apparently is a good reminder that he has _some_ dignity left. 

He glances over to the side to see Darren with a ridiculous pout on his face. His bottom lip is jutted out and his bushy eyebrows are drawn together. 

“No,” Chris says. He’s firm on it, not going to change his mind. 

And he doesn’t change his mind - but Darren is determined and a few hours later Chris finds himself sitting on a park bench watching Darren make an absolute idiot out of himself, rapping and bouncing and shimmying along to what he’s singing. 

No one gives him in any money. A couple of people even ask him to stop, but by his third song Chris is pretty sure Darren is just doing it to make Chris laugh, anyway. 

*

Darren is actually kind of a tiny guy. 

He hides it well. His personality is big, but underneath he’s small - scrawny, ribs showing, arms thin. He gets sick a lot, too. He almost never completely loses the cough he has. He usually pushes through and doesn’t let it get him down, but the colder the days get the more of a struggle it is for Darren. 

Chris discovers a new motivating factor in his life. He’s willing to do things to get Darren what he needs that he’d never do for himself. 

He walks down the aisles of a little market. His backpack would earn him scowls and suspicious looks, so he’s left it with Darren. It makes him nervous - Darren’s not in much shape to fight off anyone right now, but Chris left him with the knife near enough to him to grab if he needs to. Hopefully he won’t need to. 

He’s wearing Darren’s jacket, because the pockets are bigger. He has a candy bar in his hand and he peruses the displays. His two crumpled dollar bills won’t buy much, but he’s not that concerned about what he can afford. 

Little bottles get dropped into his pocket, anything he can close his fingers around out of view of the mirrors attached to the ceiling. Darren has a fever and a cough and at night he shakes so hard sometimes Chris worries that it’s a seizure. 

He’d forgotten - watching Hannah’s tiny body shake with it - and Darren isn’t, Darren’s not that bad, but it terrifies Chris. 

Darren’s taken all the out of date medicine they’ve been able to scrounge up so far. This is what he’s left, what he’s resorting to - shoplifting whatever he can get and hoping desperately that something he leaves with does some good. 

He puts the candy bar back and gets two cans of chicken noodle soup he sees on a bottom shelf. 

“How much for these?” He asks the boy behind the counter, who looks barely older than Chris himself. 

“Ninety seven cents,” the boy says. “Plus tax.”

“They’re dented.” Chris shows him the edge of the can. “I only have two dollars.” 

The guy looks at Chris and for a moment Chris thinks he’s about to be told no, or even worse - discovered for all he’s not paying for. Then the boy shrugs and digs a quarter out of his own pocket. “Okay.” 

“Thanks,” Chris says. 

The shame makes him hurry out the door with his head tucked low, but it’s worth it when he can watch Darren down a whole can of soup and then give him the medicine that will help him breathe better while he sleeps. 

The medicine hits Darren hard, despite the food with it. Chris sits with his back to a brick wall and lets Darren use his lap as a pillow, spreading their thin blanket over him. He strokes his fingers through Darren’s hair, not even caring how greasy it is at this point. 

He doesn’t sleep at all that night. He wakes Darren up to give him more medicine, probably before he should, but he’s worried. He lets Darren sip water from a plastic bottle they refill at fountains and swallow down two pills and a mouthful of sticky thick cough syrup. 

The intensity with which he cares hurts him. In his old life he’d never have grown so close to someone so fast… or maybe he would have, if that person had been Darren. 

Darren isn’t Cal. Darren is something so much different and it’s still scary to Chris but it doesn’t feel like he can walk away from it. He doesn’t want to. 

His mind and his heart tell him that it’s bad to just accept this - accept that he _trusts_ Darren and that he’s already gotten too attached and reliant - but his heart and his gut tell him that it’s already done. The idea of spending every night cold and with only the sound of his internal monologue to keep him company is already terrifying. He can’t go backwards. 

He won’t call it love yet. He can’t. He can’t answer those looks Darren gives him sometimes, those sweet-hopeful glances that probably mean more than Chris understands. He knows they mean _something_ , though. Darren wears his heart on his sleeve. 

Chris wouldn’t know how to do that even if he wanted to. 

When he’s confident Darren isn’t about to wake up, he lets his hand slip down underneath the jacket to rest over Darren’s heart, letting the thud-thud-thud reassure him that he’s not alone. 

* 

Darren makes a recovery. 

It’s slow, though, and that scares Chris. He doesn’t want to let Darren out of his sight after that, and Darren teases him a little but mostly he just seems happy for the company. 

They’re fine like this, Chris thinks. They’ll be fine - they watch each other’s backs. They keep each other safe. It’s good to have someone, as long as he remembers where the limits are. 

Then Christmas happens. He kisses Darren and he doesn’t even know why he does it, except that it’s been so long since anyone has gone out of their way to do anything nice for him, and he just… 

He wants to do something nice for Darren in return. At least that’s what he tells himself for the first three seconds before he realizes with a shocking jolt that this isn’t for Darren at all. Chris wants this. He wants Darren’s hands on him and his mouth - so sweet, almost too sweet. There’s pain in how tender Darren is with him, like Chris is made of glass. 

Maybe he is. But he’d like to think he’s that kind of glass that shatters but still doesn’t fall apart. He might be a little hard to see through but hes still in one piece in the end. 

He’s a kid and this is his first real kiss and it’s Christmas Eve in a grimy hotel room, but Darren’s given him presents and a warm bed for the night and Darren both cares for Chris and takes care of him. 

When the kiss is over Darren stares at him like Chris has just turned his whole world upside down, but his smile is so big and happy and his arms are so warm. 

Darren falls asleep first, body tucked up against Chris radiating heat. Chris could sleep tonight, finally - he could sleep without worrying about his safety or freezing to death or being robbed. But he finds himself awake, anyway, just watching Darren’s face so peaceful in his dreams. 

* 

"We're gonna get out of this, you know that, right?" Darren asks him. 

It's another one of those cold nights. They have a sleeping bag now, a pretty decent one that's not quite big enough for two grown men but they're both smaller than they should be. They make it work and the heat of their bodies helps. Chris still can't feel his toes, but he spends less time thinking about it when Darren's constant chatter warms him from within, too. 

"You think?" Chris asks. It's not even something he dares to dream of, really. Dreams are easy to forget when making it through each day takes so much focus. 

Darren apparently still makes time for it, though. He just hums and kisses the back of Chris's neck and says, "I know it." 

*

New York is a lovely town to fall in love in. 

It would be lovelier if date nights were acts of indulgence instead of plotting for survival, if walks in the park at night were leisurely instead of attempts at scoping out the best places to bunk down, if they could quaintly duet for their own pleasure instead of to try and scrape together money for life’s necessities. 

But they make do. Chris has never had any other kind of relationship, so he judges Darren for what Darren can do for him - not by the experiences life denies him. They’re building something together, and Chris is discovering that what Darren has to offer is almost as vital as food in his stomach or shelter on the worst nights of the cold.

Darren can’t give him fun presents and expensive meals, but Darren gives him something even better: hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, there will be a sequel.


End file.
